John Manley says “he wouldn’t be surprised” if Canada’s Liberal party executives met in the near future and asked newly appointed Minister of Finance Dominic LeBlanc to take over as acting leader from embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and lead the party into an election.
“You heard it here first – just a hunch that I have,” said Manley, chairman of Jeffries Canada and former finance minister and deputy prime minister under Jean Chrétien, in an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Thursday.
In the same interview, Lisa Raitt, vice-chair of global investment banking at CIBC Capital Markets and former deputy leader of the federal Conservative Party, said the current political turmoil in Ottawa could weaken Canada’s position in upcoming trade negotiations with the U.S.
Manley’s comments came in the wake of former finance minister Chrystia Freeland’s surprise resignation on Monday, which plunged the Liberal party into “a state of considerable chaos,” he said, and brought Trudeau’s future as prime minister into question.
As Trudeau faces growing calls to resign from opposition party leaders to members of his own caucus, Manley said Trudeau will likely take the parliamentary holiday break to consider his options before taking “the temperature of things” next month.
“If I had to place a bet today, I’d say that he is going to have to find a way to allow a succession to occur,” he said.
Raitt said that given the threat by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods on his first day in office next month, “what the country needs is an election,” but acknowledged the current government is unlikely to call one.
“Somebody needs a strong mandate to negotiate with the U.S. with respect to these 25 per cent tariffs – I think that’s an existential threat that we have to take seriously,” she said.
Raitt added that if Trudeau were to step down imminently or early next year, triggering a Liberal leadership race, it would weaken Canada’s position in those negotiations.
“If we’re in the middle of a leadership race during that time, I can tell you; I’ve been in one and I’ve ran one, and nobody’s paying attention to what’s happening in Ottawa when there’s a leadership race on, it’s just all consuming,” she said.
“And we don’t have the luxury of being consumed with something internally when something externally is that important, so I think (there should be a) quick election to figure out who has the mandate and proceed from there, but I doubt that’s the direction this government is going to go in.”
U.S. trade negotiations
Trudeau is expected to shuffle his cabinet on Friday, according to CTV News sources, in what will be his first public appearance since Freeland’s abrupt exit on Monday, the same day she was set to deliver the government’s fall economic statement.
Freeland’s announcement came the same day Trudeau’s housing minister, Sean Fraser, announced he would be leaving cabinet and would not be running for re-election.
These high-profile cabinet departures have led to questions around who will lead and fill out “team Canada” in upcoming trade negotiations with the incoming Trump administration in the U.S.
Raitt said she expects them to be led by LeBlanc, who for the time being holds the double portfolio of finance minister and minister of public safety, democratic institutions and intergovernmental affairs, but she added that she’d “like to know where Melanie Joly is in all of this.”
“Joly is the minister of (foreign) affairs. She would have had her portfolio carved out to be given to Chrystia Freeland if that was the plan, and we really haven’t heard much from her,” she said.
“And quite frankly, we haven’t heard from the prime minister. I mean, what CEO would allow this kind of news to twist around for four or five days without addressing the company or the people around them? I just don’t understand his silence and why he hasn’t come clean.”
Manley added that Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry, François-Philippe Champagne, is another cabinet member who shouldn’t be overlooked as a negotiator given his international and trade experience.
“If the prime minister were to ask for my advice, I’d say you create a team, the finance minister clearly has to be part of that, and Champagne and Joly need to be part of that as well,” he said.
“Probably, I’d spearhead it with Champagne, he’s very energetic, he knows the file. Trade and industry are very closely related, and now, apart from LeBlanc, he’s the senior economic minister in the government.”